Note: You can view this teaching on our YouTube Channel. Some people believe God is angry and ready to kick our butts if we get out of line.
Some people believe God is primarily known by love and is constantly working to help all of creation thrive in health, wellbeing, and harmony.
Both of these images appear in the Bible.
Jesus was clearly motivated by God’s love, probably because he experienced it powerfully and couldn’t stop talking about it. It changed his mission away from what his cousin John the Baptist was promoting toward wooing people into the loving arms of God. His teaching challenged the religious and civic authorities who preferred a God and paradigm that employed domination to control its subjects. Those authorities worked together to kill Jesus, but the Spirit that animated and motivated Jesus also resurrected Jesus after death - he was experienced alive (albeit in a new way). This gave his followers great confidence that what Jesus said was true. They went on to promote a loving, inclusive God. They couldn’t stop talking about it, probably because they kept on experiencing the love of God in their lives.
Maybe it’s time to let the God of wrath die, because maybe that God never existed. Perhaps that image in the Bible says far more about the culture it was written in and for, and far less about God’s character.
Maybe it’s time to let the love of God transform us more fully. When we do, we just might begin following Jesus more naturally, which will lead to a more abundant, thriving life for everyone.